Lycaon's Prey
by I Am Definitely Jeff Bridges
Summary: When a simple hunting mission goes wrong, Percy finds himself the bearer of an ancient curse and unable to trust himself around those he loves. All that matters now is how he's going to get back to Annabeth, or if instead he'll have to accept his new place - a place among the very monsters he's spent so many years fighting against... (on indefinite hiatus)
1. Chapter 1

_This_ _story is kind of AU, because it ignores Heroes of Olympus and everything after, but also Percy doesn't have the Achilles Curse. Just so you know._

 **Lycaon's Prey**

 **1**

Looking back, I can safely blame Thalia Grace for pretty much single-handedly ruining my life. To be fair to her, it wasn't on purpose (which tells you just how much our relationship has improved in the years since we met) but a lot of things which went wrong could easily be traced back to the April morning when she woke me up by bursting into my cabin and saying "Hey, Kelp Head, get up. We need to talk."

"Do we?" I asked, rolling over to shield myself from the daylight in the doorway.

Unfortunately, in doing so, I left my feet sticking out from the end of the covers, presenting Thalia with an opportunity to electrocute me as she said "Yes."

It was an opportunity that she wouldn't have passed up in a million years, and I flew about a foot in the air. If anyone ever asks me about it, I'll deny that I shrieked at a pitch and volume I didn't know I was capable of, but, just between me and you, it was a sound that could probably have shattered glass.

"Get dressed, Percy," she said. "I'll meet you at Zeus' Fist in five minutes." And with that, she turned around and left, leaving a smell of ozone in the air and one very disgruntled son of Poseidon: me.

Part of me really wanted to go back to sleep just to teach her some manners about waking people up, but the fact that she hadn't tried to shock me again before leaving (which I'd have been totally ready for, mind you) told me that whatever it was might actually be important.

So I got dressed. Jeans, Camp Half-Blood T-Shirt, and a brief spray of deodorant to ward off that sweaty teenager smell I was beginning to worry would haunt me until I was an old man. I'd grab a shower later, but with the time limit Thalia had given me, there wasn't really time to have the soak I normally enjoyed. Honestly, I'd had to start having baths again at home to stop me from blowing Mom's latest advance on a massive water bill, so it was lucky that the stuff at camp was literally a gift from the gods.

The walk to Zeus' Fist was no different from normal, which was a shame; it would have been nice for someone to come and tell me that the plans I'd made for the future, vague and flexible though they were, were about to go straight out of the window.

"Hey, Pinecone Face, what's happening?" I called up to the black-clad figure atop the pile of rocks.

Thalia turned to look at me, and even from my position down below, I could see the wry smile on her face. "Come on up," she said. "And sit down. This could take a while to explain."

I obliged, scrambling up the rocky mound towards my cousin, where I took a spot on the boulder to her left. "If I have to be sitting down, it must be bad," I said. "Break it to me gently, will you?"

She sucked her teeth in. "I'm afraid you've got a nasty case of chronic stupidity. It's probably fatal. There's nothing the doctors can do. I'm sorry."

"I said break it gently!" I protested.

She shrugged. "When the news is that bad, there's no such thing as gently. Anyway, that's not why I called you here."

"I figured: you tell me I'm stupid in public enough that I can't understand why you'd need to call me out here this time."

"Reminding you probably stops it from getting worse," she said. "You've really got no idea how many times I've saved your life with this."

"Whatever helps you sleep at night," I told her. "Although of all the bullies I've had, you're the first to claim that it's secretly good for me."

"I've just got class like none of them had. Besides, I'm trying to get in your good books; I need your help."

"I'm sorry?" I asked. "Did I mishear you? Did you just say you need my help? And if so, can I get it in writing, for proof?"

"Ha ha," she said sarcastically, like she didn't find me hilarious or something. "For real though. I do."

"Yeah, I'm listening," I said. "What's up?"

"You know we're under-strength after the war. Normally we'd be digging in, picking new recruits carefully to replenish the losses, that kind of thing. But then, a few months ago, one of the new girls went missing. We never found her again. The month after, another one vanished, but we found her soon enough. Werewolves, or something similar, had got her. Ripped her throat out." She paused and breathed in deeply.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Well. It got worse, gradually. Lady Artemis ordered that none of the recruits went anywhere alone, and next time we found one of the senior Hunters. Then two of the recruits. Last month it was three girls. We find most of them, or the remains, anyway, but… some of them are still missing. All of the ones we find are werewolf victims, though, so there must be some kind of group targeting us. But we haven't found them yet, and we're down to nineteen Hunters apart from me and Artemis. Less than half what we were a couple of years back."

I nodded, but something still wasn't making total sense to me. "Why've you come to _me_?"

"Ar-" she began, but cut herself off, as though not wanting to attract the goddess' attention by saying her name. "My Lady," she said instead. "She won't admit that there's a problem, not to the other gods, at least. I think there's a part of her that thinks she can still sort it out by herself, but even if there isn't… she's proud. She couldn't stand losing face in front of Apollo especially. So you can't tell anyone about this, alright?"

By this point, I could more or less tell where this was going, and I didn't like it one bit. I wasn't fully aware of how badly it would go, but I was pretty confident there would be alternative ways for me to spend my day that involved significantly less risk of grievous bodily harm. Even so, I gave Thalia my word. "I won't."

She gave me a tired smile. "Thank you. Normally I wouldn't dream of going against her orders, but… it's hard, Percy. I thought with the war over we'd be able to settle down, but we're dying faster than ever, and she's forbidden us from even asking for help. We're fish in a barrel. So, I need your help."

"Go on."

"Have you ever had any run ins with werewolves?"

"No."

"That's probably for the best. It's a pretty simple plan. The way I see it, there are basically just two steps: find them, and kill them."

"You make it sound so simple."

"It's not as bad as it sounds. We figure there can't be that many of them, otherwise they'd have attacked all-out by now. We're not exactly as intimidating as we used to be. So we head out into the woods. We shouldn't have to go far to get noticed, and it shouldn't take long before they decide to attack us. So we get ambushed, but as long as we're careful not to get out of earshot of the rest of the Hunt, we'll have back-up to clean any wolves up. If all goes to plan, it should be simple."

"When does it ever go to plan?" I asked.

She gave a brief laugh at that. "True. But I figure it's better to have a plan that goes wrong than none at all."

"Fair enough. So what am I, bait?"

"No. I mean, I'd never ask you to – _I'm_ the bait. I'm the one they'll want. You're… my bodyguard, in a way."

I might have laughed at that, if I'd been in a worse mood. I wasn't going to _be_ the bait; I was just going to be in between the bait and the hungry werewolves who wanted it. But I could tell that for all the jokes and jibes, Thalia was stretched almost to breaking point, and pointing out that detail was unlikely to make her relax. She'd come to me for help, and I was going to do my best to provide it. "So why do you need me?" I asked. "Surely there are others the rest of the Hunt would be happier with?"

"Ideally, I'd be taking one of them with me, but none of them are close combat specialists. They'd be a liability. And it's true they won't think much of you, but _I_ trust you, and it's me who'll have your back and whose back you're going to have. I figured two of us have a better chance of surviving it than just one, and I picked you because you're one of the strongest demigods I know, and because they won't be expecting you. If you've never met them before then they might underestimate you, and seeing the Lieutenant of Artemis with a boy could confuse them, but what it really comes down to is that it's suicide to do it alone, but too many people will scare them off so the plan won't work. And I think you're the best person for the job."

"Why not Annabeth?" I asked.

"Knife fighter," she explained. "To stab any of the wolves she'd have to be in jaws' reach. You've got more reach. You'll need a silver sword instead of Riptide, but you still seemed like the best choice."

I thought for a moment to consider what I knew. Riptide was the only sword I'd ever really felt comfortable using, and throwing myself head-first into mortal danger was hardly sensible, even by my standards. On the other hand, this was Thalia – my cousin, my friend – asking for my help, and desperately too, to save the lives of people she cared about.

I know I said earlier that she was the one who ruined my life, but at this point, having told you this much, I should admit it: I walked into this with my eyes open.

"Give me a few days to sort the new sword out," I said. "But yeah, I'll do it."

* * *

It didn't take long to get everything organised. The Hephaestus cabin were only too happy to help craft a silver sword, a challenge they'd never had before. A couple of them wrinkled their noses when I asked for it to be weighted similarly to Riptide, but agreed that it was probably necessary.

Considering that it wouldn't be designed for duelling, and would likely only be used once in anger, they reckoned it would probably just take a couple of days to forge. That time passed painfully slowly, but once it was over, I stood in the centre of the forge, balancing my new weapon in my hand while Jake Mason explained the process.

"Seeing as Riptide is magic, it was hard to replicate the weighting exactly," he said. "It's pretty unique, as far as I'm aware. I think we've got about as close as we can, but you'll need to practise a little with it to familiarise yourself."

I swung it experimentally. It felt a little on the heavy side, but remarkably close to my normal sword. "That's great, thank you," I said.

And then it was down to the arena to try it out on some unsuspecting dummies.

The dummies, being inanimate objects, didn't stand a chance, but that didn't stop me from getting a certain satisfaction out of slamming the sword in and out of them. Clarisse stopped by for a quick spar that ended as a draw and confirmed what I'd already suspected: the new sword wasn't as good as Riptide, not nearly.

But it was still a fine piece of work, and that was all it needed to be.

* * *

Inevitably, the hardest part was going to be telling Annabeth that I was leaving her, so I took Thalia along for support when I went to break the news.

"Are you serious?" my girlfriend asked, mouth half-open in disbelief. "Oh my gods, you are serious, aren't you?"

"It's just for a day, maybe two," I protested. "It's in, out-"

"Shake it all about," Thalia unhelpfully interjected.

"And we're done," I finished, which might not have rhymed, but definitely made more sense. "I'll be back before you notice I've gone."

Annabeth took a deep breath, which might have been interpreted by someone less optimistic than me as an attempt to stop herself from throttling me. "I understand that this is important and that you need to go and help Thalia, alright? But your head is even more full of seaweed than I thought if you expect me to stay here and play Penelope while you go off to war. I'm coming too."

"Woah, woah," I said. "I don't want you putting yourself in danger."

She gave me a look that said she could take care of herself, thank you very much.

"Besides," I carried on, "too many of us will scare them off, right Thalia?"

"True," said the daughter of Zeus, who seemed to have forgotten she was there to be supportive and was instead browsing through some of the notes on one of the Athena kids' desks with a look on her face like it was a pile of manure.

"So I'll hang back with the other Hunters," said Annabeth. "If that's what the plan needs, it's fine, but I'm not letting you go off on this thing unsupervised."

"I'll be there," pointed out Thalia.

"Unsupervised by anyone responsible," clarified Annabeth. "Besides, I trust the Hunters as little as I trust the werewolves, where you're concerned, and I'd quite like you back in one piece. I'll be out of harm's way, but close enough to keep an eye on you both."

I tried to find a good argument against that, but couldn't, so I looked over at Thalia for some help. Thalia herself didn't seem to notice, so I coughed loudly and said "Thalia?"

She looked up and shrugged. "Seems reasonable to me."

This was exactly the opposite of what I'd wanted her to say, but unfortunately for me, it pretty much settled the debate.

And so, only four days after Thalia had originally burst into my cabin, the three of ourselves sat in the back of the camp van for three hours as Argus followed Thalia's directions to find the rest of the Hunters of Artemis.

On being dropped off at a roadside that didn't look like it was near anywhere in particular, there was another hour's trek deep into the woods, until we finally found ourselves in a small encampment of silver tents.

Up until that point, I'd been feeling pretty comfortable with this mission. Obviously I was putting myself in mortal danger, and that was never exactly fun, but at the same time, I'd defeated titans and survived a prophecy that seemed to explicitly tell me I was going to die. After those, how hard could a few werewolves be?

In all my adventures up to that point, though, no-one had ever looked at me in quite the way the group of Huntresses were looking at me right then. At least, no-one who was supposed to be on _my_ side.

" _This_ was part of your plan, Thalia?" asked one of them.

"Some of you will remember Percy and Annabeth," said Thalia, either not noticing or choosing to ignore the glares coming in our – well, my – direction. "They played a major role in saving Olympus, and also in rescuing Lady Artemis from Mount Othrys before that. They've come to help out with the werewolf problem."

"And why do we need a _boy_ 's help?" came a voice, but I couldn't see who said it.

"So that when we spring the trap, I've got a full set of Hunters ready to kill wolves as best they can. Percy's coming with me, he'll be there to hold them up while you close in. Annabeth's going to hang back with you to spring the trap. Any problems?"

There was some grumbling, but no-one seemed in the mood for an outright confrontation. Secretly, I suspected, they were all so tired and ground down by the last few months that they were more interested in fighting off the wolves than in pursuing a vendetta against all men.

"You ready?" Thalia asked, as the Hunters dispersed.

"Yeah, I think so. Should I put my armour on?" I asked, but Annabeth shook her head.

"It'll clue them in that something's up," she said. "But that doesn't mean I give you permission to go and get yourself killed, alright? Be careful out there."

"Yes ma'am," I joked. "Would it be suicidal to kiss you goodbye in front of the Hunters?"

"You'd survive it if you were lucky, but I'd definitely die of disgust," said Thalia. "You can kiss to your little heart's content when this is over and you're back at camp, but until then I'm limiting you to hugs."

Annabeth and me – wait, Annabeth and I, sorry – exchanged a look, but decided to humour the daughter of Zeus, considering I was likely to be relying on her to keep me alive in the very near future. We held each other for a moment, and then it was time to be going.

* * *

"How are things with Annabeth?" asked Thalia as we picked our way through the undergrowth.

We'd been dating for a while now, and around each other we were about as comfortable as we ever were, but I still got a strange kind of thrill when other people acknowledged that we were a couple. I grinned without meaning to as I said "Good."

Thalia took one look at me and rolled her eyes. "Gods, spare me the details," she said. "How's the whole architecture gig?"

"Also good, I think. I mean, you know she hates sharing until the plans are all finished, but she's getting very invested in the on-site stuff. Last time she went up to Olympus she came back with complaints about pretty much every god I've ever heard of and a few I haven't."

"So, that's four gods?"

"I'd like to take this opportunity to point out that I make sure to know a god's name before pissing them off."

"Oh Hades, that's about ten thousand then?"

"Much more accurate," I smirked. "How about you? We didn't actually get that much chance to catch up last time I saw you, what with the world ending and all. How've you settled into the Hunt?"

"Well, by and large. I'd have thought there'd be problems with others Artemis passed over for the Lieutenant spot, but they all respect her so much… it's incredible, really, this bond there is. They're my friends, my sisters, but they all trust me to lead them well too."

"You sound happy."

It was her turn to smile, and I was pretty certain that she too didn't even realise she was doing it. "Yeah," she said. "I am."

Any further conversation was cut off by a rustling sound in the bushes to our left. We both swung around to face it, Thalia drawing her spear – silver tipped, I now noticed – and my hand going straight to Riptide until my brain registered that I needed the sword sheathed at my other side for this particular monster.

Unfortunately, that reflex was all that was needed to kill the plan off pretty much entirely. And tear it to pieces. And throw every piece into a fire. Because my immediate reaction being to draw the wrong sword meant that I was totally unarmed when the wolf that had drawn our attention sprang out of the bushes, leaping towards me with its mouth open and teeth bared in an angry snarl.

Thalia gave a wordless yell as she speared another that came towards her with her spear, letting the others know we had our wolves, but I had to dive out of the way to avoid having my throat torn out, landing awkwardly and trapping the sword beneath my body. More wolves emerged, and Thalia swung her spear out in an arc to ward them off as I rolled over to avoid another snap at my heels.

I finally managed to wrestle my sword out from its sheath, cleaving through the air towards the wolf which had been pursuing me. It jumped backwards, avoiding the blow by a whisker.

I got to my feet and, sword out to protect myself from the snarling wolves, made my way carefully over to Thalia. There were about eight wolves surrounding us, all wary enough of our silver weapons to stay out of our reach, but clearly aware that we had no real means of escape. Fortunately, all we had to do was hold them up until the Hunters arrived to wipe them out. So I stood there, back to back with my cousin, waving our weapons as threateningly as we could and occasionally swiping at any monster which crept too close to us.

"Where are the others?" I asked. It was hard to judge time in a situation like that, but I was sure we'd been standing there too long.

"I don't know," she said. "They should be here any second."

Noticing a wolf edging forwards, I lunged forwards and caught it in the leg, drawing blood, but it wasn't a killing blow. The wolf yelped and stumbled back, out of my reach.

"If they didn't hear, we need to do something," said Thalia. "Is there any water nearby?"

There wasn't, but before I could answer, a silver arrow flew through the trees, piercing one of the wolves through its snout. More follows, and that animal and two others were killed in an instant.

Thalia screamed a wordless warcry and leapt at the remaining animals, which snapped but turned to run as I did the same, swinging my weapon and yelling. The wolves scattered before us, a couple of them outright fleeing but the other few backing towards the bushes they'd come from. If they made it in, we would never be able to catch them, so I attacked again, finally snagging a kill and making my way towards another until, suddenly, there was an agonising burning sensation in my calf.

I gasped in pain as I fell to one knee, but the wolf in front of me noticed my moment of weakness, and lunged for my face. I raised my free arm to protect myself, and the wolf's teeth sank straight into the forearm, blood spurting from the instant holes that appeared in the skin. Its teeth stained quickly red.

Seeing Thalia arriving from my side and the Hunters behind me, the wolf let go and fled into the bushes. Arrows pursued it, but none made contact.

I looked around, seeing another couple disappear into the distance, but most of the pack had dissolved into the monster dust that covered the clearing, peppered by Hunters' arrows and wounds from my sword and Thalia's spear.

The danger over, the adrenaline started to subside, and I began to realise just how much my injuries were hurting, to the point where I found it hard to focus on anything else. For some reason, they were affecting my vision, which was turning gradually fuzzy with little black spots appearing out of nowhere.

"Percy!" I heard a voice call, and turned to see Annabeth running towards me, a look of panic on her face.

Then everything went dark.

* * *

 **Lycaon isn't in the character list? Well, then. He's gonna be here, as you may be able to tell from the title.**

 **I would like to promise that there'll be regular updates for this, but I know better than to make promises I can't keep. I promise to _try_ for regular updates. I _have_ already written the next chapter, though, so I'll definitely (maybe) put that up next week.**

 **Apart from disregarding HoO and the Curse of Achilles, I think the only important thing you need to know about this AU is that Percy no longer has the set of armour that melds into his clothes that he had in that one short story.**

 **Sorry Percy. It would have come in handy here, but it would also have meant there was no story.**

 **Aside from that, I hope you enjoyed this opening chapter, and while I realise there's not exactly a lot to judge the story by yet, you should still feel free to review if you have any burning thoughts/ideas/questions/constructive criticism, because feedback is always exciting for me to read.**


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

It was night when I woke up. Annabeth crouched nearby, tending a small bowl over a smaller campfire, but there seemed to be no sign of Thalia or any of the other Hunters.

"Annabeth?" I said.

My voice came out hoarse and sore, but there was relief on her face anyway as she looked up. "Glad to see you're awake," she said. "How are you feeling?"

"Not great," I admitted, grimacing. My right leg and left arm both felt like they were being turned on a spit, but I knew they'd heal before too long. It wasn't my own health I was worried about. "Are you okay?" I asked.

" _I'm_ fine, thank you for asking," she said. Then, with a small smirk: "After all, I'm not the one who got shot _and_ bitten."

"Shot?" I asked. We'd been fighting wolves, after all, who didn't have the opposable thumbs required to work a bow. It seemed I'd hit a tricky subject though, as Annabeth's face darkened.

"Apparently, one of the Hunters was aiming a shot at one of the wolves and… slipped. That's what knocked you down before you got bitten. Then, once you _had_ been bitten, most of them figured that if there was a chance you'd been infected…"

"I should be put down," I finished, grimly. So the pain in my leg was friendly fire.

"We're not sure exactly who it was, though Thalia has a few candidates she can believe are capable of murder. Whoever it is, though, they're a Huntress, so we'd need to get Artemis to intervene for anything to be done about it, and good luck getting Artemis to side with a _boy_ over one of her own followers. No matter how many times that _boy_ saved her and the whole of Olympus." She spat the word 'boy' the same way many of the Hunters did, as though poisoned, and yet somehow not the same – like saying it that way was an insult to the Hunters themselves, rather than to me. Distant thunder rolled as she finished speaking, but neither of us paid it much attention.

"Can't Thalia…?" I asked. I didn't know exactly _what_ I wanted Thalia to be able to do, but _something_. To take action against whoever had shot me out of some grudge against my entire gender.

"No. Thalia leads them, and she can take care of basic discipline, but from what I understand, something as serious as the attempted murder of an ally in battle can get you expelled from the Hunt. The problem is that Artemis' say is the only one that matters when it comes to the serious stuff. Then you've got the added complications that we don't know for sure who it is; that the only evidence to prove it would be eyewitness accounts from the other Hunters, which would make even more problems; that the Hunt are down on numbers as it is; and then that you went and got yourself bitten, so they were all calling for your head anyway, and she might reasonably take the view that they were right to do so." As she spoke, she stirred the bowl over the fire more and more vigorously, until the contents began slopping over the sides. She didn't seem to notice.

"I didn't _want_ to get bitten, you know," I pointed out gently.

Immediately, her features softened. "No," she said. "No, you didn't. Sorry, that… that was unfair."

She finished stirring the pot, then spooned half of its contents into another bowl, which she handed to me, saying "There's ambrosia in there," and keeping the other for herself. It was full of soup – disappointingly not-blue, but satisfying to have, even so.

"Where did you get food and bowls?" I asked. We'd not intended to be out for long, and had been planning to stay with the Hunt if the mission did take longer than expected.

"Thalia," said Annabeth. "She would have stayed, but we decided it was safer if the Hunt didn't stick around you, in case one of them decided to take matters into their own hands. Again. She says sorry, by the way. I think she feels terrible."

A chill went through me. If Thalia had actually apologised, that could only mean that things were _really_ bad. I tried to joke it off. "Sorry?" I asked. "Are we sure we're talking about the same Thalia here?"

Annabeth smiled slightly. "I think the exact words were something along the lines of 'tell your boyfriend I'm sorry for breaking him, I wouldn't have asked him along if I'd known he couldn't handle a few chihuahuas,' but you know how she is. I might be worried about how she was feeling if I wasn't busier nursing you back from the brink of death."

It was true: that was basically Thalia-speak for throwing herself at my feet and weeping from sorrow.

"She doesn't know about my history with chihuahuas, does she?" I asked. Once, on the St Louis Arch, a yappy little chihuahua had turned out to be the chimera, and very nearly killed me. If I'd known this would be anything like that quest, I'd probably have chased Thalia from my cabin the moment she stepped inside it.

"I don't think we ever told her that bit, no," said Annabeth.

I swallowed. "So, am I a werewolf now?" I asked. "Does that mean I get loads of cool wolf-y powers, or do I just have to switch to a diet with more raw meat?"

She played with a strand of hair, looking at me that way she so often had before we started dating, like I was a puzzle to be solved. The look by itself was disconcerting, but it was worse to realise that I'd stopped being her solution and started being her problem again. "I don't know," she admitted. "I asked Thalia, and she doesn't really either. Maybe Chiron or someone will know when we get back to camp, but as far as I know, we don't really understand how werewolves work. I IMed Argus as soon as I had the chance. We should be safe from any more attacks, but it's not a risk worth taking. And anyway, as fine a bandage-wrapper as I am, we need to get you looked at by some Apollo campers. But I don't know. I'm sorry Percy, I just don't know."

Admitting that she didn't know something had always been hard for Annabeth, so the fact that she would say it so openly to me gave me some hope that maybe I wasn't _too_ much of a problem for her. She came to sit with me at the base of the tree, where we waited together until a hundred-eyed surfer-security guard appeared at the other end of the clearing to take us home.

* * *

The next few days at camp passed in a blur. Life went on largely as normal. None of the stuff you might expect if you were slowly morphing into a monster seemed to be happening to me: I didn't find my sense of smell magically enhanced, my canines seemed to be much the same length as they always had been, and I ate no more meat than I previously had – though it should be noted that even before being bitten, I ate burgers more often than was strictly recommended by health experts such as Annabeth. And when I saw some Hermes campers chucking a tennis ball between themselves, I didn't even have a sudden urge to go and chase it.

 _Honestly_ , I was beginning to think, what had all the fuss been about?

Despite this total lack of interesting developments, I still had to check into the infirmary three times a day – first thing, after lunch, and before bed – for the Apollo campers to take blood tests and hair samples and any number of other medical things to check if I was about to transform into a bloodthirsty monster.

"See if you can hold this," said Will, holding out a silver knife.

I took it, tossing it about from hand to hand, then taking hold of the blade instead of the handle in case that was the bit I was supposed to touch.

"No discomfort?" he asked.

"None," I replied.

"No burning sensation?"

"It's quite cooling, really."

"Hm."

"No need to sound so disappointed," I said.

"I'm very happy for you," he said. "Just a little surprised, is all. I'd like to see what would happen if you ate some silver, but that probably counts as medical malpractice. How are the actual wounds?"

"The leg's as good as new," I reported happily, and it was true. The ambrosia in Annabeth's soup had fixed most of the problems there, and a few days of peace had sorted the rest. "The arm's getting there, too." That too was true. There were still tooth marks on my skin, and I expected it to scar, but the wound was no longer giving me any pain.

He sighed. "Well, we'll keep monitoring you, but as you say. There doesn't seem to be much wrong with you."

As I was leaving, I was accosted by Annabeth, who threaded one of her hands through mine and guided me down towards the beach, which was fortunately empty at the moment. One of the advantages of being at a camp for the children of Greek gods is that most of them are afraid to use the beach in case my Dad blasted them for something their parents did a thousand years ago. On the one hand, I felt a little bad about being the only person in camp who could really enjoy the seaside, but on the other, I wasn't about to turn down having my own private beach, was I?

"I've been asking around about werewolves," she said.

"Around?"

"I've been asking Chiron and the Hecate cabin about werewolves, and I've been doing some reading of my own" she clarified. "The Hecate kids don't seem to know anything we don't, which isn't much of a surprise: they were always a longshot. And it's the same with the books; they can give you endless accounts of how it depends on the wolf that bites you or whether it's the full moon when it happens, but none of them can agree on any of the details."

"And Chiron?" I asked.

She smiled apologetically and squeezed my hand. "Barely more helpful. Werewolves have been around for thousands of years, but he says they've never been a significant threat to camp, and that the Hunters of Artemis might know more."

"Did you tell him about the arrow?" I'd asked her not to mention it, reasoning that if we couldn't do anything about it, the incident would only serve to make people angry and drive even more of a wedge between camp and the Hunters than already existed.

Annabeth had disagreed, saying that there couldn't be any harm in telling Chiron, of all people. On the one hand, she had a point, but being pretty certain there was nothing we could do, I wanted to go without seeing that worn expression of disappointment cross my mentor's face, even if I wasn't even the one he was disappointed in this time. Over the years, I knew I'd caused Chiron enough stress to last his immortal lifetime, let alone my own all-too mortal one. So it was a relief when she said "No, I didn't tell him. I just said the Hunters probably wouldn't be too keen on helping you because you're a boy, and left it at that."

"Was that all he said?" I asked, figuring that even though she'd qualified it with a 'barely', my girlfriend had still said that the centaur had been 'more' helpful than her books or the Hecate cabin.

"Apart from a handful of myths about how werewolves originated, he mentioned that there have been a few run-ins with them over the centuries, but that any demigods they've bitten have never made it back to camp. They don't turn up regularly enough for him to be sure whether or not any missing campers are now part of any packs, but they only found the bodies about half of the time. And he also said there was no way of telling why some bodies were left to be found and others weren't."

"So we still don't know anything," I said. I hadn't been expecting Chiron to be able to tell us everything was fine for certain, but everything still seemed about as vague as it could be.

" _But_ ," began Annabeth, in a tone that was worryingly like my Mom's, "if you don't mind me jinxing you, then-"

"I do, actually."

"-everything seems to be going alright for the moment."

I looked at her. "All that means is that when it _does_ go wrong, it'll be worse than normal."

She shrugged. "I'm not saying that everything's going to be perfect-"

I snorted. "If you were, I'd be doubting whether you're really a child of Athena."

"Percy, _listen_ to me."

I looked back to her, to those stormy grey eyes and expression that seemed slightly hurt that I'd interrupted her when she was trying to be serious. "Sorry," I said. "I'm listening."

"I'm not saying everything will be fine, but what I am saying is that I trust you, okay? You're the strongest person I know, and you've beaten things far worse than some flea-bitten werewolf. It would take a hundred arrows and a thousand bites to bring you down, so what I'm saying is that you'll cope with it. And knowing you, if there's anything to worry about at all, then you'll come out the other side stronger than you went in."

"Now you really _do_ sound like my Mom," I said, but gave her a grateful smile to show that I wasn't being serious.

"Which is the highest compliment you can give, and speaking of her, you should call home."

"What?"

"When was the last time you called her?"

"Like, a week ago? Two?"

"So she'll be worried sick. You should call her and catch her up on everything."

"That'll just make her worry more!"

"So you can give her an edited version, but don't keep her out of the loop altogether. Anyway, in the end, everything will turn out _fine_."

To be honest, I was perfectly happy to have an excuse to talk to my Mom; it was just the telling her about the mission that I wasn't convinced about. Even so, after some more nagging from Annabeth, I caved in and IMed her. It turned out that Annabeth had been right about that part, at least: after talking to my Mom, it felt like a weight had been lifted from my chest, and I found myself reassured and freshly confident for whatever challenges lay ahead. Whatever happened, I knew I had people in my corner who loved me and would fight for me, no matter what.

At that point, as far as I was concerned, Annabeth might also have been right that everything would work out fine and I had nothing to worry about.

It was to collective disappointment, then, that a couple of days later, the full moon appeared, and everything, so to speak, went to Hades.

* * *

 **And here is the next bit.**

 **I don't think that there are any major announcements I need to make, but if there are… I'm sure they can wait until the next chapter.**

 **Big thank-yous to everyone who followed and favourited – I hope I won't let you down!**

 **I'm also very grateful to those of you who took a moment to give some feedback, so here are some responses to those, with the original review in italics and a reply in bold:**

InfiniteFeather _: Sounds promising. Good charactersation, interesting plot and good pace. The first few paragraphs were a bit awkward to read, but the rest flowed pretty well. I'll wait to see where you'll take this._

 **I'm glad you liked it! Sorry if the opening seemed a little rocky, but hopefully I'll have a bit of rhythm from now on, and either way, I'm going to try and keep the story moving swiftly enough that it doesn't matter too much.**

Bloodwolf37: _There's allot of similar stories out there. One way to fix this would be to have the characters and similar to cannon. Should that be relationships, character personality, or even believable plots. Just some hints for making this story different from the rest._

 **Not to worry – starting out on this, my plan was always to take a premise that people are fairly familiar with, and then to try and tell my own story within that. I'm not exactly plotting on reshaping the fandom here, but hopefully I'll manage to avoid some of the more common flaws and clichés that werewolf-Percy stories sometimes have.**

Lupa: _i'd probably prefer to see the pairing be pertemis seeing as this deals with werewolves and some of the best stories in my opinion are like that but its really up to you seems interesting so far so keep up the good work_

 **Glad you liked it so far! I'm afraid that for some of the same reasons listed above, I think this story probably won't be Pertemis. I figure that in theory, what makes a story good or bad is how well-written it is rather than the pairings, and as far as I can tell, a majority of stories with werewolf-Percy end up as Pertemis. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but most of the ideas I have about where to take this story go in some slightly different directions to that.**

ShadowsClaw: _An interesting start! Who doesn't love a good old-fashioned tortured Percy?... Looking forward to seeing where you go with this one. :) As always, keep up the excellent work._

 **I know, right? I've always had a kind of guilty soft spot for this kind of fic, so it made sense to give it a go while I don't have too many other commitments going on. (That's a lie. I have more commitments than I know what to do with, I simply act like they don't exist.) Anyway, hopefully I'll be able to keep it interesting as it progresses, and thank you as always for the continued support!**

 **I hope everyone enjoyed this chapter, and feel free to drop any thoughts about how the story's shaping up in a review!**


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

To be fair to us, it's not as if the full moon took us by surprise. We have seen _some_ werewolf movies, you know, even if saving the world doesn't exactly leave ages to catch up with the latest blockbusters. No, we knew that the full moon was coming, and we knew that if there were going to be any lasting effects from my bite, then they would manifest at under that moon.

We just… miscalculated.

Maybe the week or so when nothing had gone wrong had lulled us into a false sense of security, but even if we had known exactly what would happen that night, I'm honestly not sure what else we could have done to stop me from going on a rampage and trying to kill multiple people.

To start with, I'd agreed beforehand with Annabeth, Chiron and Will that I'd spend the whole day before the full moon inside my cabin, with meals brought to me and the door only unlocked once I'd confirmed that I was still very much human-shaped and not about to kill them. This was in case I reacted to the moon before it was actually visible.

I'd miss the campfire which was on that night – and Chiron refused to reorganise the entire camp's schedule just because of what he called my 'personal problems', which in my opinion sounded worse than if he'd just said that I was at risk of eating my friends and family. So that was a shame, but otherwise, the plan seemed fairly foolproof. As long as I was kept separate from everyone else, I couldn't hurt them, right?

Wrong. I mean, not _actually_ wrong, because if I _was_ kept separate from everyone, the night would have passed fairly smoothly. The big problem was just like every single other time in my life when I've tried to follow a plan, the plan… well, I'm not sure. I'm trying to think of an example, but nothing I can come up with is bad enough to tell you how badly my plans go. But _really_ badly. _Really really_ badly. I mean _really really really really –_ well, you already know I got bitten from trying to follow a plan, so from here it's probably easiest if I just tell you what happened.

I think spending a day stuck alone in my cabin would have been hard even if I didn't have ADHD. Just try counting sixty seconds going past in your head now: it's painfully boring, right? Now times that by sixty for every hour, and maybe by another ten for the hours I was awake. Do you know how many seconds that is?

It's a lot of seconds, that's how many. I'm sure Annabeth can give you an exact number if you're curious.

I didn't exactly have a choice in how I spent that time, though, so I passed it as well as I could.

I IMed my Mom again and Annabeth came and sat outside the door for a while, so I wasn't cut off from the world entirely. You can't watch TV at Camp Half-Blood because the signal would attract monsters, but the Stolls had connected a DVD player to a screen, and I was all ready to settle in and watch movies all day, until I realised that while setting it up, they'd also replaced my glorious collection of ocean-themed films ( _Finding Nemo, Free Willy, Das Boot_ ) with _What a Girl Wants_. I have to admit I've never seen _What a Girl Wants_ , but I'd also argue that the mere fact that Connor and Travis thought it would be funny to leave me it for me proves that it's… not exactly my cup of tea, if I'm being kind.

At that point, I decided that when I got out of my cabin – still in my right mind or not – I was going to kill the Stoll brothers, as slowly and painfully as possible.

The day continued to pass one second at a time, which wasn't nearly fast enough. I rearranged my shelves about three times, made my bed, stuck my head in the fountain and sang a silly song while juggling balls of water. I even tried to read an Ancient Greek play Annabeth had lent me – _Perikeiromene_ – but I gave up at the title, which I have to admit I didn't understand even a little bit. I know, I know, I should have been determined and pushed on, but don't tell me you've never looked at the cover of a book and just thought 'NOPE'.

You have, no matter how many times your parents and teachers warned you against judging by the cover, and I know you have. Don't lie to me; you're better than that.

The most exciting part of the day was actually trying to figure out where to keep my silver sword, which made me appreciate Riptide's easy storage a whole lot more. I ended up leaning it against the wall in the corner, deciding that I'd probably hang it over the door later.

Despite all these problems, the light coming through my windows first brightened, and later dimmed, telling me that the day was coming gradually to an end. Annabeth brought a plate of food – pizza, chips and a burger, along with some odd leaves that she called 'salad'. I'd forgotten to stock up on snacks, though, so I ate it all anyway, figuring that I could probably trust her not to poison me.

As night drew on, I held a one-demigod sing-a-long of _The Little Mermaid,_ using the fountain water to make figures of all the characters (apart from Ursula, who was played by yours truly). That done, and at an utter loss for anything to do, I finally gave up and slotted _What a Girl Wants_ into the DVD player. Unfortunately, Daphne had no sooner landed in London than a stabbing pain cut through my stomach.

I gasped and dropped from the bed to the floor, doubling up to clutch at my belly. The pain only increased until I started feeling sick too, like I was about to throw up the meals I'd eaten earlier. I staggered over to the toilet, holding myself up over the bowl, and opened my mouth ready to vomit into it. I gagged and retched, but nothing seemed to come up. The pain increased again, to the point that I slipped down onto the floor, where I curled up into a ball and tried to endure it.

My belly rumbled, like the food was trying to get out, and for one crazy moment I wondered if Annabeth _had_ poisoned me.

Then there was a _CRACK_ in my right ankle, and I forgot all about the food as I twisted away from that leg as if I could dodge whatever it was that was hurting me. Then the other leg made that same _CRACK_ ing noise.

I collapsed in a heap, and _screamed_.

My yell bounced off the walls, and sounded in my own ears, but no-one burst in to save me. Looking down at the injured limbs, I saw my shoes and socks slip off, and as they fell away, I saw paws.

Two grey paws, like a dog's… or a wolf's.

Cracks sounded further up my legs as they followed my feet by shifting into a new body, then in my hands and arms. I tried to let out another roar of pain as it happened, but my voice was hoarse from use, while my body was sprouting fur and shrinking to a slimmer, longer shape, tearing rips in my clothes and fractures in my ribs as it did so.

Finally, watching helplessly as though it was happening to someone else, I saw my nose stretch out from my face, grow into a snout, and turn black,

The pain didn't totally disappear, but it faded into the background – along, unfortunately, with any kind of logical thought.

My first instinct was that I was trapped. Stuck in a small space, like a cage, with walls far too close together and a single, barred exit. I leapt at the door, panicking, scrabbling for any kind of purchase against the smooth wooden surface, but it was locked shut. I didn't stand any chance of getting it open.

This, though, was the point where our planning failed us: we simply didn't know enough about werewolves. I don't know if we'd underestimated how strong I'd be, how determined, or simply how fat, but we'd got it wrong, and lives were suddenly at risk because of it.

I went to the back of my cabin, then sprinted, as fast as I could, through the centre of the fountain, straight to the door, which I flung my whole body into as hard as I could.

It made the same kind of cracking noise my bones had been making only moments earlier. Moonlight shone through newly created gaps. I turned, made the charge again, and the door fell apart under my weight. I found myself in the open, in front of a crowd of cabins and under a low moon.

There was a light and the sound of laughter and singing from the arena, so I followed it, curious about what was going on. And, now I remember it… kind of _hungry_.

The rich array of smells coming from the crowd there definitely didn't help. There were strong natural, flowery stenches contrasted with the more artificial stink of perfume and make-up, themselves alongside a smell of smoke, another of paper, and a particularly strong smell which I could only describe as _death_ coming from one spot. There were smells like the warmest summer's day and vines weighed down with fruit, but most importantly, they all smelled mouth-wateringly _delicious_.

(There was also a strong stench of body odour that was less delicious, but I was willing to overlook it for the more appetising scents.)

I stayed in the shadows as I neared the arena, trying to work out which of the animals there would be my prey. I looked carefully at them, at their faces and bodies, trying to work out which of them would be the easiest to sink my teeth into. There was a female with blonde hair who sat apart from the others, looking unhappy and distracted. She looked as though she might be a weak member of their pack, and I was considering waiting to try and hunt her down when she left the arena. Then my gaze landed on two of the others in the crowd, and everything changed.

They were two males, almost identical to each other. Both were tall and skinny, with a mess of brown curls for their hair, and elfin features on their faces. And as I saw them, I felt overcome with an intense, burning rage. I recognised them for some reason – and I was determined to see them dead.

I leapt down onto the arena floor, revealing myself. The crowd of half-bloods all gasped and retreated, but I was only interested in those two. I prowled towards them, snarling, and they backed away nervously. Off to the side, someone shouted a word I didn't recognise: "Percy!"

The two demigods continued to try and get away from me, but the steps of the arena meant that they would have to look away from me to climb them at any kind of speed, and they ended up scrambling away on all fours.

I growled again, and charged towards them, teeth bared, set on tearing out their throats.

Something hit me in the side, knocking me off-balance and sending me sprawling on the floor. I turned to look, and it was the blonde-haired one I'd initially planned on killing. Perhaps I'd underestimated her. I had myself a new target. She turned and ran up the steps as fast as she could. I, being a wolf, followed the immediate instinct I had when I saw something run: I got to my feet and gave chase.

With my four legs, I was faster than her, and gained ground quickly, but she'd had enough of a head-start that for the moment, she managed to stay ahead of me. I realised we were retracing my steps, going back towards the room I'd come from. I found that odd, but was more interested in catching my prey than in where it was going.

She disappeared into the same cabin I'd been trapped in, and I knew I had her: there were no other exits from that room. I slowed to a walk, choosing to savour the moment.

As I stepped inside, I saw that she was huddled in the corner of the room, facing away from me, as though trying to hide. That didn't make much sense to me, as she hardly blended in with her surroundings, but with her arms tucked into her body as they were, what else could it be? I growled softly so she knew I was there, and so that she could die more worthily, facing her killer, if she chose to. If she stayed there, however, I would be just as happy to let her die like a coward.

She turned around – and I found myself facing a the point of a silver sword.

My hackles rose immediately, and I flinched backwards, knowing instinctively that the weapon could seriously hurt me.

"Percy," she said again. I still didn't recognise it as a word, didn't know what it meant, but it seemed to be addressed to… me?

"I know you're in there," she said. "You just have to stay calm, alright? You just have to stay calm, because it's gonna be okay. It'll all be okay, as long as you listen to me."

I cocked my head, curious about why this demigod was talking to me, and why she looked to be close to tears as she spoke. I hadn't killed anyone, so it couldn't be from grief. It might have been caused by fear, but as terrifying as I was, she still had the silver sword pointed straight at me, and she'd shown something of a hard edge by tackling me away from the other half-bloods earlier.

My biggest problem, though, was not why she was crying: it was whether I was going to stick around to try and defeat her or leave to try and find an easier kill. I knew that it was a risk, but the silver weapon was shaking slightly in her hands, so I chose to remain, expecting an opening to present itself soon enough. I backed to the door, safely out of reach, while she stayed pressed to the cabin's back wall.

"Percy?" she said again, leaning forwards. I growled, and she flinched back.

I caught a sudden scent on the light breeze coming from the open door – several scents, in fact – but the one which stood out the most was, again, that stench of _death_. I turned, realising that its owner was approaching – but he was already standing in the doorway, blocking my exit. He had black hair and wore so much black clothing that he was hard to make out against the night behind him, but what little of his skin I could see was pale, and the glint of a silver dagger in his hand was unmistakeable.

I turned and snarled, but he shook his head. "Don't even think about it, Percy," he said. He jabbed the dagger towards me and I reflexively jumped back, allowing the blonde girl to slip out of her corner and join the other demigods.

And leaving me stuck in the back of the cabin again.

I growled again, but facing two silver weapons, there was little I could really do. At the same time, my brain was going into overdrive trying to find a way for me to escape the danger right in front of me.

"See if you can find any more silver," said the black-haired one with the dagger to one of the others behind him, of which I now saw there were a number. "We need to set up a watch over him for the night, and the more people we can have in here the better." A couple of the half-bloods with him ran off into the night, but most stayed with weapons levelled at me, not that any but the silver ones could actually hurt me.

Even so, it wasn't as if I could get past the ones who _did_ have silver-edged weapons, so I stayed there, prowling back and forth and waiting for an opening. When I got too close, one of the half-bloods would wave their weapon at me, just missing me by a fraction of an inch, maybe shaving off a tuft of hair, but never actually wounding me.

For the most part, what had been keeping me back was the fear of death or injury, but as the sword whistled past my face and I just managed to keep all of my whiskers intact, I realised something: they didn't actually _want_ to hurt me.

Not only that, but they were actively trying to avoid it.

Even as a normal demigod, I would be the first to tell you that I don't always think things through very carefully. In my defence, though, I spend more average time in life-or-death situations than most people, and the results would be heavily weighted on the death side if I tried to think things through too thoroughly. As a wolf, my mental state was maybe a little less stable anyway, so that's what I'm going to blame for why I took off at high speed for the small gap between the demigods' legs.

They were still extending their weapons in an attempt to contain me, but with a twist _here_ and a side-step _there_ I was on the threshold and on the verge of escape, when something grabbed my back leg, but I kicked out, dislodging the black-haired demigod, and avoiding the blonde one as she flung herself at me in an attempt to stop me from getting away.

And I was free.

There were more campers outside the door, but without silver, none of them were eager to confront me. Despite that, knowing that some of the others were armed with silver, I was no longer interested in hunting them, and instead turned towards the woods, ignoring the campers' shouts as they receded into the distance. Instead, I just ran until I picked up a new scent: deer.

It was nearby, and apparently separated from any others of its kind, making it an easy target. I felt that deep-seated hunger returning now that I was out of danger, and changed my course to creep towards it, creeping through the forest until I caught sight of it in a clearing.

It was a young buck, either lame or, more likely, with some kind of injury to one of its hind legs, judging by the awkward angle at which he held it. He was lying under a tree, dozing peacefully, perhaps thinking himself safe from the predators the forest might hold.

If so, he thought wrongly.

I leapt into the clearing and dashed towards the buck. It noticed me immediately, and scrambled to its feet to run, sprinting as hard as its hurt leg would allow it to in an attempt to get away from me.

But I was hungry, and I would not be denied.

* * *

 **Oh look, everything's gone horribly wrong and now Percy's a bloodthirsty wer** **ewolf with no recollection of what it was like to be human. Not to mention that the Stolls' movie prank backfired fairly horribly.**

 **What a shame.**

 **Most importantly though, the effort to contain him within camp has failed miserably, and everyone's going to have to make some hard decisions about what the future holds, so stay tuned for that next time!**

 **Thanks again to everyone who followed, favourited, and reviewed, so here we go:**

Bloodwolf37: And another amazing chapter to a potentially amazing story. Thanks for responding and sorry for any errors in by reviews.

 **Amazing and potentially amazing is putting a fair bit of pressure on me – but I'm glad you think it could go the distance, and hopefully I won't let you down. (And not to worry about the occasional typo – it happens to all of us!)**

yinstark: Will this continue to be a percabeth fic? Typically werewolf!Percy fics don't feature them and I hope this one does! Not many rep for my op nowadays

OverLordRevan: love the story. I definitely hope we get something from the hunters group on this. Annabeth will definitely turn into werewolf with him right?

 **I've put these two reviews together 'cause my answer is basically the same to both, which is that I can't tell you, because that would spoil the fun! Having said that, I will promise that I'm going to do my best to be true to the characters, which means that neither of them is about to break up with the other just because it's a bit tough for one of them to be a werewolf. Glad you're both enjoying it though!**

Cynder2013: Is it weird that the line that made me laugh the most was Will's comment about feeding Percy silver probably being medical malpractice? ...Just a little? Okay, I'm fine with that. I predict a lot of fun in the future of this story. And by "fun" I mean the demigod definition of fun, which includes a lot of explosions.

 **Not at all weird – the last edit I made to that chapter was to add that line in, and it's also the one I'm most proud of! As far as fun goes… well I'm not sure how to wrangle giving the wolves access to WMDs, but I'll do my best to find a decent substitute!**

 **As always, all feedback is greatly appreciated, but in particular I'd be interested to hear any thoughts you may have on wolf-Percy's point of view. It was kind of hard to find a balance between the more disjointed and instinct-driven style to show his confused point of view and the more coherent stuff that's maybe a bit easier to read. It'll clear up to some extent anyway as he gets used to it in the future, but any ideas about how far I should take that could come in handy.**

 **Otherwise, I hope y'all enjoyed this chapter, and I also hope to see you next time, when we have ANGST!**

 **(three cheers for angst hip hip hooray)**


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

Here is what I noticed when I woke up:

First, that I wasn't in my cabin. Nor was I in my room at home in Manhattan. Instead, I was outside somewhere, in a clearing in a forest. It looked like the woods at camp, though there were no recognisable landmarks to give me an exact location.

Second, a strange metallic taste in my mouth that I didn't recognise.

Third, that I ached all over. I wasn't sure how I'd got there, but my body must have been put through the wringer in reaching this spot. Every part of my body felt the wrong shape, like it had been forced into a container with totally mismatched proportions.

Fourth, as I was stretching to try and relieve the discomfort I was feeling, cracking my joints to try and loosen them up a little, something on my chin also cracked, like a liquid had dried there overnight. I put it down to drooling in my sleep.

Fifth, as I looked down, there was a dead deer next to me. I couldn't tell much about it – male or female, young or old – but with the chunks of flesh torn from its back and the bloodstained ground around it, there was no mistaking its deceased status.

My brain, waking even more slowly than the rest of me, took another few seconds to connect the dots between the dead animal next to me and the strange taste in my mouth or the dried substance on my chin. When it finally clicked, I looked down at myself and at the deer again in horror, seeing now that there was blood all over my chest, with specks of it flecking my arms, legs and sides as well. At this point I also noticed a sixth thing.

Sixth was that I was showing a little more skin than normal. A lot more, in fact. On a scale of zero to ten in terms of how many clothes I was wearing, to tell the truth, I was fairly firmly in the region of zero. Actually, you'd have had to be wilfully blind to give me a one or higher.

As in, I was naked. Oops. How had that happened?

So, quick stock-take: I was naked, sore and covered in blood, without much idea where I was and without _any_ idea how I'd got there, except that when I woke up the day before, I'd definitely been in my own bed at camp. I tried to remember it, but only came up with a handful of things that were more like loose concepts than actual memories: fear, hunger – and, for some awful reason, _death_.

I looked down at the dead deer and realised that if I'd slaughtered that so brutally, who could say what I might have done to numerous innocent demigods back at camp? I had to get back there – and quickly.

* * *

In the end, it wasn't so difficult. I spent a while searching for the sea, but eventually found it, and once in the water I was able to get my bearings. It turned out I had only gone a couple of miles from camp, and so it was a quick swim to get home. It's possible that I mentally scarred a few fish and gave a few others a hot topic of gossip for the next few decades, but hey – being naked in front of fish is less likely to get back to people I actually know than if I'd walked.

And so, a little over an hour after I woke up – and thankfully washed clean of all the blood – I stepped out onto Camp Half-Blood's beach, hands positioned carefully over my crotch.

Which was just as well, since Annabeth was just telling Nico that "I'm worried for him."

"I'm gonna assume that it's me you're worried for and tell you that I'm very grateful for that, but right now the best thing you could possibly do would be to hurry back to my cabin and grab me some clothes before anyone else sees me," I said.

They both turned to look at me, open-mouthed and – once they'd registered who I was and how many clothes I had on – more than a little red-faced.

"Please?" I asked.

"I'll go," said Nico hurriedly, standing up.

"I'll come too," said Annabeth, scrambling to join him.

I didn't know whether to be offended that neither of them would talk to me while I was naked or relieved that _I_ didn't have to talk to either of _them_ while I was naked, but the net result was that just a few minutes later I was able to duck underwater again and get dressed, before they took me to see Chiron.

"It's good to see you again, my boy," he said, his eyes crinkling as he smiled at me. He didn't mention the reason lurking just beneath the surface of his words, which was that he was worried I might have gone feral for good. "I've called a cabin counsellors' meeting for immediately after lunch, when we're going to discuss last night's events, and how to avoid a repeat of them in a month's time."

"Chiron, I'm so sorry," I began, trying to think of a way to make up property damage and attempted murder to him, but he waved it off.

"It's not your fault, Percy," he said. "You turned into something else last night, and you couldn't help yourself. We had simply not prepared ourselves thoroughly enough for the possibility that events would proceed as they did. If anything, I should be apologising as the one responsible for safety around here. Our task now is to make sure we do not repeat the same mistakes in the future. Now, I suggest you go and get some food. I expect you at this afternoon's meeting as Poseidon cabin counsellor, and if you don't mind, I'd like you to tell everyone as much as you can remember of the experience."

"Sure. But, Chiron?"

"Yes?"

"I, er. I don'r really remember anything. It's all mostly a blur."

He sighed and suddenly looked old and defeated, like I'd confirmed his worst suspicions. "I understand, Percy. But anything you do remember could be of the utmost importance, so anything you do recall…"

I nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, of course. And, Chiron, is everyone…?"

His reassuring smile returned, and my own worst suspicions were assuaged. "Everyone is fine, Percy. You didn't hurt a soul."

* * *

The buzz of conversation at the picnic tables died down as soon as people caught sight of me emerging for lunch, and I had to walk in almost total silence to my table. Fortunately, Nico and Annabeth took pity on me, both deserting their own tables to come and sit with me, and Nico sent some pointed glares at the campers bold enough to stare at us, making them all take a sudden interest in their food.

Even if no-one was comfortable bringing up the night before as a topic of conversation, it still hung over the pavilion like a cloud, dampening the mood more effectively than anything else I can think of. Meals were largely eaten in silence, though Annabeth made a few half-hearted efforts to ease the tension by talking to me. In truth, though, the ice in this situation was too thick to be broken by news of Ares' outrageous demands for the redesigning of Olympus, or the bits of gossip she'd got second-hand from the Aphrodite kids.

After eating, we went and sat around the ping-pong table in the Big House, where Travis and Connor Stoll approached me as they came in for the meeting.

"Hey, Percy," said Travis.

"We'd um, just like to say sorry for taking your movies yesterday," said Connor.

"So we've put them all back where we found them, and we, er, we took back the one we left there instead," said Travis.

"And we hope you're feeling… better soon," finished Connor.

"Oh… cool. Thanks, I guess," I said, baffled by the conversation. As they left, I turned to Annabeth. "Since when did the Stolls apologise for their pranks?" I asked.

She looked at me, confused. "You really don't remember?" she asked.

I shook my head.

"Percy… you tried to kill them. You almost _did_ kill them. It was… well, it was terrifying."

I tried to _kill_ them? That was worrying, but before I could really let it sink in, Chiron called the meeting to order.

"Counsellors, counsellors, attention please," he said, waiting for what little chatter there was to die down. Just like lunchtime, the conversation in the room had been quiet, fragmented and uneasy. "You all know why we're here," he said, "so I shan't bore you by reading the agenda. Percy has agreed to give us his account of as much of last night as he remembers, so I thought we'd begin with that to try and understand this phenomenon as much as we can. If you would?" he asked, looking to me.

I took a deep breath. "There's not a lot to tell," I said. "I sat in my cabin all day, no problems. Then, in the evening, it was like… it was like there was something inside me, trying to break out through my skin. I guess that was the wolf. From then on, I can't remember any details, just single senses and feelings: first panic, then hunger, then a whole load of stuff – what I remember most was this burning rage, and, for some reason, something like death?"

I looked around, but no-one seemed about to jump up and say I'd murdered their loved ones. That still came as something of a surprise, even after Chiron's confirmation of the same – but I wasn't about to complain. "After that… fear. I don't know what I had to be afraid of, but something scared me. And then the strongest feelings I can remember are some of the ones I can actually explain. There was more hunger, a thrilling feeling, and then satisfaction. I wouldn't know why, except…"

I looked around. It would be hard to say what I had to say, but these were my friends. I had to trust them – and I had to make them understand that they couldn't trust me. "This morning, I woke up next to a deer. There was blood all over me. Including in my mouth. I'd killed it while I was a wolf, and I'd… eaten it. Parts of it."

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"Perhaps we can fill in some of the gaps for you," said Chiron gently, apparently realising that no-one was about to intervene to save me from the gazes of almost three dozen horrified demigods. "Annabeth, Nico, would you?" The two of them obliged, fumbling through a lengthy, possibly sanitised version of the night's events.

As they progressed, I began to realise that killing the deer was the least of the reasons for people staring. Somehow, knowing what I'd done – and more importantly, what I'd _tried_ to do – was worse than not knowing.

* * *

The next few days felt like Camp Half-Blood was in a drought. Everywhere I went, conversations evaporated into thin air, being replaced with a thick, uncomfortable layer of silence. Opponents willing to spar with me dried up until every match I fought was against one of Annabeth, Nico or Clarisse, while the swordsmanship lessons I'd been taking pretty successfully up until now suddenly emptied out.

I could tell people weren't _trying_ to make me feel feared or isolated. It was just that they were all far too conscious of the whole wolf thing to be comfortable around me, which had the unfortunate side-effect of making me feel… feared and isolated.

Rachel arrived in camp the day after the transformation, having ditched her classes at Clarion to be there, but she was unable to produce a prophecy declaring that everything was going to be fine – or any other kind of prophecy at all, leaving us all hopelessly in the dark about the future. Even so, I was glad to have her around, as one more person who wasn't impossibly intimidated by me.

Meanwhile, Chiron called regular counsellors' meetings to try and find a way to keep camp safe next month, all of which ended frustratingly with every option discarded or occasionally angry words being traded across the table-tennis net. Drew Tanaka seemed to have fixated on the idea of putting silver bars on my cabin to stop me escaping, but the Hephaestus cabin had used up their entire supply of the metal in making my sword, meaning that she spent ten percent of her time coming up with impractical schemes to obtain more of it, and the other ninety sending barbed words at me and Jake Mason for not anticipating that I would be turned into a werewolf. Clovis from Hypnos and Lou Ellen from Hecate, meanwhile, spent a surprisingly long time at each others throats, both arguing that the other should be able to provide a solution; or rather, Lou Ellen was at Clovis' throat while he snored and Miranda Gardiner defended him.

In short, everyone was freaking out over the fact that I was little more than a ticking time bomb, but none of them had a clue which wire to cut.

To top it all off, as the weeks dragged by, there grew this nagging sensation in the back of my mind, or maybe more accurately my gut, that I was hopelessly out of place, like a puzzle piece lost beneath the couch. I tried my best to shake the feeling, throwing myself into the few parts of camp life where I hadn't suddenly become a total outcast, but every time I paused for breath I found my gaze slipping to the edge of the woods.

It was scarily like the urge to throw yourself off the nearest cliff just for the thrill of finding out what it's like.

All of which led me to the top of Half-Blood Hill one early dawn, a few days before the next full moon, too early for anyone else to be up, a light bag on my back, taking one last look at the place I would always call home, even if it could never be again.

"Percy?"

I turned out from camp to see who had spoken, and despite myself, my face broke into a wide grin. "Grover!"

He hugged me quickly, but when we separated again, his expression was one of concern. "Percy man, what are you doing up here? Don't tell me you've started getting up in the mornings now?" he asked, but the joke fell flat.

"Just this once," I said, realising I would have to tell him. "I'm leaving, Grover."

"You can't leave: I've only just got here, all the way from Wisconsin, and I got up extra early today to surprise everyone!" he said, grinning, but it faded when I didn't smile with him. "Last I heard from Annabeth was that everything was under control, which is why I took my time getting here. I caught some turbulence from our link, but… it sounds like I'm not as up-to-date as I thought."

"When did you speak to Annabeth?"

"Three, four weeks ago by now?"

Before the full moon then. I let out a short laugh. "Yeah G-man, you're a little behind on the news."

I gave him a short description of my transformation at the full moon how I'd gone mad and tried to kill my friends, and how we had no viable way to stop it from happening again in a few days' time.

Grover, for his part, pulled out his dream diary and noted that he'd had some pretty nasty nightmares on the 28th, the night of the full moon. Clearly they hadn't given him the full experience though, as he still tried to argue me out of leaving. "Come on, Perce," he said. "That doesn't mean that the answer's to run off in the night. Stay until the next full moon at least; we've got to see if we can work something out."

"It's more than that. People don't feel comfortable around me anymore, and they're right not to. I'm not safe. They try to hide it so they don't hurt my feelings, but I can see people looking for the nearest exit every time I talk to them in case I suddenly go mad again. And it's hurting the few people who _are_ fine around me because no-one else will even come near them when I'm there."

"I'm sure that's not right, man. These are your friends, you're their leader, you _saved_ them. They want you to get better!"

I shook my head. "That's the thing though, Grover. I'm not saying that they don't want me to get better. I'm saying that they're scared, because _I'm not going to_. No-one knows of any cure for this; we can't even think of a way to contain me for one night a month! The first time was a disaster and I almost killed people, I _tried_ to kill people. So I'm leaving now, before someone really gets hurt, because it's only a matter of time until they do."

"And what about Annabeth?"

I tensed. "What about her?"

"This will tear her apart. I assume you haven't told her you're leaving, because if you had she'd be here shouting at you for being a Seaweed Brain."

I cracked a small smile at that, because he was exactly right. "I wrote her a note," I said. "She'll find it when she wakes up. She'll understand."

"Yeah, she'll understand that you're being reckless."

"This isn't reckless, though, is it? I've waited for as long as I can, but I've been thinking about this for weeks. I know that when I change again, I have to be as far away from every other living thing as I can be. I can't count on everyone having silver weapons to hand all the time."

He looked at me for a long moment, a sad expression on his face. I was pretty certain that I'd seemed determined enough to leave on the outside; it must have been our empathy link that was letting him know how conflicted about this I was feeling, that was making him stay and continue to fight to stop me leaving. "You're scared she'll persuade you to stay," he said. It was a statement, not a question.

"What?"

"That's why you won't talk to Annabeth before going. 'Cause then you wouldn't be going at all."

"Grover," I said, my voice low and urgent. "I _have_ to go. I can't do anything at camp, but I've got this feeling – there's something out there, something important. I have to find out what it is, and maybe it'll be a way to sort this whole mess out."

Another long pause, during which I became conscious that dawn was creeping over half-blood hill. If I was going to go, it needed to be soon. The silence stretched on longer, longer, and then, just when I thought he wasn't going to say anything else, Grover spoke again. "So much for her 'something permanent' then."

The words hit me like a punch to the gut. The words had been designed specifically to hurt me, and judging from the sick expression on Grover's face, he felt as awful about that level of manipulation as I did. But he'd said it anyway, and it stung.

"That's why I'm going," I snapped. "To save that for her. For _us_. I'm going because as I am now I can only ruin things for everyone here, but especially for her. There are no good foundations when she can turn around not being sure if she'll see her boyfriend or just some monster she doesn't recognise, you understand? I have to go because it's the only chance we have. I'm going out there to do whatever I can, go wherever I have to, fight whatever gods I need to fight to get myself rid of this thing, you understand? I'm going because _I love her_."

I leaned back after speaking, shocked at the passion in my own speech. Everlasting love was a pretty big declaration for a sixteen year-old to be making, but I'd meant every word of it. And despite satyrs' ability to read emotions, Grover didn't seem to have anticipated the depth of my feelings either. His expression morphed into something like pity. It didn't thrill me, but I liked it better than when he'd been outright arguing with me.

"Your dyslexia's pretty bad, Percy," he said softly. "Some of the worst I've ever seen. On top of ADHD… how long did it take you to write her that note?"

I shrugged like I didn't remember sweating over every word. "Couple hours. Maybe three."

He nodded. "How much did you manage to write?"

"About half a page."

His eyes welled up and he looked more like an eighty year-old human than a thirty year-old satyr for a moment. "How come this stuff always happens to you, man?"

That was one of the many questions I'd been asking myself ever since I was bitten. "How about you figure it out, and you can tell me when I get back?"

He smiled. "By rights I should be going with you. For old times' sake, if nothing else. But I guess you won't let me?"

I shook my head. "I can't put you in danger."

"Right, right. Just remember, Percy. I'm a Lord of the Wild, so any time you're out there and you need help…"

"I'll give you a call," I promised. "But while you're here, if you could explain…"

"I'll do my best. Good luck, Percy. I'll see you soon."

We hugged again, briefly, and I was gone before Apollo's light had touched the roofs of the cabins.

I walked for several miles, far enough that I knew camp wouldn't be able to find me easily, even if they were up and looking for me by now – unlikely, considering I was rarely out of bed by this time of day.

I stopped at a car wash opposite a bus stop, where I'd catch a ride further inland, hopefully finding out what my gut was pulling me towards sooner rather than later. At the wash, though, I had something to do before my ride arrived.

I headed over to the coin-operated spray nozzles, where I slotted a few quarters in before setting the water going, angling it carefully into the light to the point where the sun's glow fractured into seven different colours.

I flipped a drachma into the mist. "O Iris, goddess of the rainbow," I said, "accept my offering. I need to talk to you."

* * *

 _Dear Annabeth,_

 _I'm sorry. I know you're mad, I know you have every reason to be. I know you can spot a thousand problems with my plan already and I've not been gone a day yet. I know you didn't want me to go._

 _I also know that I had to leave. I can't stay at camp if I'm putting everyone in danger, and I can't offer you any kind of future together if I'm the way I am now. I know that's what you want: something permanent._

 _I left so that maybe, some day, I can offer that to you. I don't know if there's a cure for me out there, but if there is, I'll find it, and I'll do whatever it takes to get back to you. I'd swear it on Styx, except I don't know if they count when they're written down and I do know you'd be mad at me for putting my soul in danger when I didn't have to._

 _I still plan on making it back to you, but I'm afraid that you're going to have to take it on trust until the day I climb half-blood hill again._

 _I can't give you an exact date, but what I can tell you is that when it happens, no day in all of history will come close to comparing with it._

 _Until then,_

 _Percy._

* * *

 **So, now New York's lunar calendar for 2010 is in my search history. The full moon really was on April 28th that year, if you were wondering.**

OverLordRevan: great chapter. I can't wait to see what's in store.

 **Thank you, and neither can I – but I'll figure it out as quickly as I can!**

mcoombes: Great story so far, I love werewolf!Percy stories. That line about feeding Percy silver cracked me up lol. Great writing

 **Thanks – as mentioned last time, I was really proud of that line, so I'm glad to see other people liked it too!**

Dallastar: I'm really enjoying it so far. Keep updating please!

 **Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying it! I hate to be too pessimistic, but I should warn you I have a history of irregular updates. However, the story won't be abandoned, and I'll keep things at least semi-regular for as long as I can keep writing consistently.**

ShadowsClaw: I'll start this off with an apology for failing to review before you posted a new chapter... Excuse: life is... you know. Life. (Speaking of ridiculous Ancient Greek homework, Percy... *internally cries*) But oooh... I like how you did Percy's internal dialogue while he's a wolf... I like it a lot better than the typical, "lookie, I'm a wolf now, time to kill some rabbit or something!" sort of thing I've seen before. Gives a certain, sensible motivation to his actions that often I think macabre fantasy stories kinda... lack. Very, very cool and well done on you! :) And I'll admit - the waiting period while he's watching the Little Mermaid and pretending to be Ursula? I can relate to that on a deeply, uncomfortably personal level... Well done as always; again your writing is just. So. Damn. Good. *cries again* Looking forward to your next update! (of any story... you know I like them all...;) )

 **Not to worry! I'm certain there have been multiple times on your stories where I've read a chapter, thought 'oh I'll give it five minutes to think of something meaningful to put in the review' and then never actually got around to it, so I can't really complain that it happened to you once. I'm glad you thought the werewolf-thought-process worked, that's a relief since it will appear in some form or other in the future. And as far as The Little Mermaid goes – well, Poor Unfortunate Souls is just the best song, isn't it? Sebastian is the only other character whose songs even come close to being as much fun to mutilate by singing over-enthusiastically. But seriously, I'm glad you're enjoying it and hopefully this chapter didn't disappoint.**

 **At this point, I'd like to give you all a sneak peek of the next chapter, but I haven't written it yet, so… I can't.**

 **You'll just have to come back next time to find out what happens…**


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

"You are very _presumptive_ , Jackson," said the goddess.

Iris was both very similar to and totally different from most of the other deities I'd met. None of the Olympian council, for instance, normally looked like they'd just come from a protest against the Vietnam War, and only Demeter had shown such a preoccupation with a balanced diet as Iris. On the other hand, the goddess of the rainbow was as reluctant as any of them to give a straight answer to any of my questions.

"Right," I said. "Sure. Is that a yes or a no?"

"What kind of a messenger goddess would I be if I refused to take people's messages?" she asked. She had this weird type of speech where the words themselves were blunt, but she delivered them in a gentle, non-accusatory way. I had the odd sensation that I was being both scolded and consoled at the same time.

"It's only for a week," I said. "That's it. Just until the next full moon, and then everything can go back to normal."

"That's all very well for you to say, but what about the consumer experience? However passionate I am about organic foods and lifestyles, I would really rather not jeopardise my primary profession. Will anyone whose message is blocked even a single time be willing to use my services again?"

"Of course they will!" I said. "You've got centuries, millenia even, of goodwill and high satisfaction ratings, haven't you? And I'd be willing to pay as many drachmae as it takes to make up for any losses you might have."

"Hm…" she said, which was at least not an outright refusal.

"Please," I said. "You could be saving lives."

She frowned. "I fail to see how that would be the case. True, as a werewolf, you are dangerous, but the essence of my messages is that you do not have to be in the same location as the person to whom you speak. Otherwise, they would not be necessary. Perhaps I would be willing to… not quite block the messages, but postpone their arrival, in return for a small favour. But you will have to explain what you mean by saving lives." She smiled warmly as she said this last part, but her gaze seemed to suggest not that I should answer honestly, and that she would know if I was lying.

I took a deep breath. "Because if Annabeth calls me, then I won't be able to say no," I admitted. "She'll ask me to come back to Camp Half-Blood, and I will go as quickly as I can, and then, however well-prepared we think we are, people will _die_."

"She will appeal to your emotions?"

"Worse," I said. "She'll use logic. She'll argue it in a way that I can't reasonably say no to, but even she can't make it impossible for me to harm anyone. So I just need a week, so I can prove to her that I'm not crazy. So I can show her this is working."

The goddess was silent for a moment. Then she said "I will collect my favour at a later date," and dissolved into a rainbow.

* * *

The journey west was a painfully slow one, and without any means of distraction, I spent the whole time stressing and fretting about whether I'd done the right thing. I knew I couldn't go back to camp, at least not until after my next transformation, but cutting off contact completely? Even if it was only for a week, it seemed… _cold_. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, really, when I realised there was no way I could just say no to a week full of friends begging me to come back, but now it was set in stone and I would live with the consequences.

 _It's only a week_ , I told myself, just as I'd told the goddess only shortly before.

I'd briefly thought about heading north, probably into the Canadian wilderness, figuring that the best place for me would be as far away from civilisation as possible, but half the reason I'd left at all, the part that had seemed too dumb and rash to admit to anyone, was the tugging in my gut, the instinct which had saved my life and given me answers on so many quests in the past. It was that feeling which led me off the bus after only a couple of hours for one that instead took me into Pennsylvania. I couldn't be certain what exactly I was being called to, but I felt certain that there would be answers at my destination, and the brief time I spent trying to ignore it left me feeling sick and drained.

I spent the days leading up to the full moon traipsing through forests, convinced that I was on the verge of finding whatever it was I was looking for, but unable to actually lay eyes on it. I was pretty certain that I was far away enough from any human settlement that there was no real problem with me staying in the area, but as the hours and days ticked by, I grew increasingly frustrated at my lack of progress, becoming pretty certain that I was simply going in circles.

It was on the evening before my next transformation that things once again took a turn for the worse.

Yes, _again_. For real. I know, right? I was beginning to wonder if going up to the Empire State Building and asking if I could reconsider the offer of godhood was a viable option.

"Well, what do we have here?"

I turned so suddenly I almost fell over, but managed to turn it into a sort of combat-crouch as I drew Riptide. If the man who'd spoken noticed, he very politely refrained from commenting on it.

"Who are you?" I asked, studying the new arrival carefully. I might not have Annabeth's powers of analysis, but I was able to gather some basic facts: he was about a couple of years older than I was, with some light brown hair and a stance that was far too relaxed for someone who'd just had a sword drawn on him, and, finally and most importantly, that sense of mine that there was something important out here was going crazy, insisting that there was something important about this guy that I needed to know.

"I asked first," he said, but his tone sounded less joking than you'd hope in a fully grown adult saying that sentence. "What's the name, pup?"

"What did you call me?"

"Pup. But if you don't like it, I can call you by your name instead. _Tell it to me_."

I hadn't actually planned to give my name up so easily, but something in his tone made me feel like I couldn't refuse. "Percy," I choked out, as if my own body was rebelling against me.

"Surname?"

"Jackson."

His relaxed stance vanished instantly. " _Perseus Jackson_?" he demanded.

I shuddered as he spoke my full name, but nodded. "That's me. Now who are you?"

"And what was the Saviour of Olympus doing with the Lieutenant of Artemis, I wonder?"

"Who _are_ you?" I demanded, but he shook his head.

" _You_ _first_ ," he ordered, an angry edge to his voice.

I fought the urge to answer for a second or so, but it only took a moment before the words burst out of my mouth, as though desperate to escape from me. "I was there to fight the werewolves that had been killing Hunters," I said.

He laughed at that. The angry questions which I'd seemed compelled to answer, making me angry and resentful as I did so without a choice, had all been intimidating. I'd been scared at the power this guy had over my body. The laugh, though, was a cackle that sounded like he was trying to do a bad impression of a movie villain, and honestly? I was kind of embarrassed for the guy. While at the same time being in fear for my life, of course. "Oh, the _irony_ ," he said, almost to himself. In my opinion, that was another bad movie villain line. "The king _will_ be pleased."

"You're a werewolf," I said.

He raised an eyebrow. "And he's cleverer than they say he is, too! Even better!"

I tightened my grip on Riptide, being (understandably, in my opinion,) a little annoyed that monsters always assumed I was stupid, but even if I'd had a weapon capable of hurting him there was something telling me I shouldn't attack this guy. That didn't make sense, of course – he was pretty clearly not on my side – but there was something about the very idea of him being harmed that made me sick to my stomach. "What do you want?" I asked, and he was fortunately more receptive to that question than he had been to my previous ones.

"Why, _you_ , of course," he said.

If his use of my full name moments earlier had sent a chill down my spine, those ones plunged my entire body into the next ice age.

"And if I say you can't have me?" I asked.

He laughed good-naturedly. "I'm afraid you don't have much of a say, Perseus," he said. "It's already been decided. Come here."

I was dragged forward by my own feet, (traitors), stumbling step by step towards him, until only a couple of feet separated us.

"Good boy," he said mockingly. "That wasn't so hard, was it? You'll be tearing out Hunters' throats in no time."

"I'll never work for you," I said, stepping back.

" _Stay_ ," he snarled, and fighting the urge to obey was like pushing against a brick wall. He leaned in close to me, and I could feel his breath on my face. "You are going to do _exactly_ as I say, Jackson, starting by following me to introduce you to the king, but mark my words, it won't be long before you're the gods' worst enemy. What's your girlfriend's name again… Annabeth? I look forward to seeing the fear on her face when she realises she's about to be eaten alive by her _precious_ Perseus Jackson."

Still immobilised on the spot, I did the one thing I could think of in the moment: I spat a huge glob of saliva directly into his face. He recoiled, bared his teeth, drew his arm back, and slapped me, hard. I was sent reeling backwards – but the spell was broken.

I knew that if I stayed to fight, the werewolf could probably give another command and I'd be his again without a fight, not to mention that I was likely to be forced into my own wolf-body at any moment, so I took the only other option I could think of, which was flight. I turned tail and ran, snapping pine branches as I crashed through them, and doing my best to ignore the frantic shouts behind me. I'd never been the best sprinter at camp, but I'd practised enough over the years to put on a decent turn of speed, and was feeling pretty good about my chances of getting away… until I glanced over my shoulder to look behind me.

There was an enormous wolf galloping after me, gaining with every stride, its form lithe and graceful as it slipped through spaces between trees that looked as though they should be far too small for it, and its eyes an angry yellow that marked it distinctly from the growing darkness of the surrounding forest.

I pulled back a branch and let it snap back into the wolf's face, but it charged through and I only just dived aside in time to avoid being mauled.

Knowing that fighting the monster would almost certainly end badly for me, I scrambled to my feet and forced my legs to run again, swerving around trees whenever I heard footsteps or snarled breaths close behind me.

I don't know how long I ran for, but eventually I chanced another glance back to see if I was making any progress, only to see that the woods behind me were deserted. I did a full three-hundred-and-sixty degree spin to try and figure out where the werewolf had gone, but he seemed to have given up the chase, deciding I was more trouble than I was worth. The sun had set and the trees limited my vision further, so he might still have been watching from a distance, but I was at least confident that he'd given up the hot pursuit.

I slowed to a walk, trying to get my bearings. The immediate danger might have passed, but that didn't mean I was going to hang around for any longer than was absolutely necessary, and if there was one thing that my time in the Greek world had taught me, it was that sometimes there's more to the world than meets the eye. So I looked up at the sky, where I could see so slivers of moonlight poking through a thin patch of trees, and realised that… I had no idea how to navigate by the starts.

I mean, I can do the sun – it rises in the west and sets in the east, right? Or does it rise in the east and set in the west? But anyway, if you know the time of day, then there are only two real possibilities for each direction, and if you have someone like Annabeth with you, who can remember how the sun actually works, then you can figure it out exactly.

The night sky, on the other hand, offers some more challenging clues to navigation. I had a funny feeling that I could probably have figured it out by instinct if I was at sea, but, being stranded miles from any major water source, I had to make do: I went left.

It's possible that was a mistake, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the giant wolf would have appeared hurtling towards me at a hundred miles per hour if I'd gone in any other direction too.

My hand went to my pocket again for Riptide on instinct before I remembered that it wouldn't do anything, so I got ready to dodge and run again – only to collapse with a horribly familiar cracking noise in my legs and back.

The transformation went far more quickly this time, as if my body was adjusting to the changes through which it was being forced. The fur sprouted simultaneously with the snout pushing out of my face and the claws bursting through my fingers, and while I still bellowed in pain, some small part of me recognised that the pain was less intense than it had been before.

The other werewolf, for his part, skidded to a halt on the forest floor and waited for me to finish turning, watching with interest as I tore or shed my clothes and my yells turned into growls and whimpers.

When I had finally assumed my new form, I stood on shaky legs to face him, feeling again the impossibly strong call, as though he should be the centre of my world. He seemed to expect this sensation, as he looked as interested as he had before, rather than angry or tense. But a part of me could still feel the pain of the slap he'd given me earlier, and with some effort, I managed to wrench myself around and start to walk away.

He growled as I retreated, but I pushed myself, making what progress I could, and even breaking into a trot. I sped up further, looking to run at full-pelt – until jaws closed around one of my legs, and dread around my heart.

I staggered forward for a couple of more steps, but he was too strong and the pain was too much, and I collapsed in a heap before the other wolf let me go. Angry at the attack, I twisted and clumsily swiped at him with a claw, surprising him so much that he almost forgot to dodge, and I sheared a patch of fur off one of his shoulders. He snarled as though ordering me to stop, but I was just getting into the swing of things, and lunged for his throat with my teeth bared.

It seemed the obvious spot to go for, for some reason.

He was more prepared this time, and responded with his own attack. We clashed in mid-air, but his weight sent me tumbling backwards, wriggling to fight my way out from under him. He took a chunk of fur and a little skin off my tail, but I got free just in time to avoid any more serious damage.

We faced each other, circling, looking for a weakness. Then my hind legs strayed into a tree, startling me, and he jumped again, a huge leap that almost took him straight over me, so high that I was able to slip quickly underneath him before we resumed our battle of nerves.

I stepped to the side more carefully from then, conscious that any obstacle in the way could give one of us the advantage we needed to defeat the other. I saw his eyes flit back and forth too, ready to use our surroundings however he could.

I circled silently, focused on his every movement and ready to react within a split-second of any movement he might make, but while his steps mirrored mine, his demeanour did not. He was full of snarls and snaps, feinting left and right in an effort to open me up. The wolf part of my brain tried to flinch every time he made a move, but somehow I was staying in much stronger control than in my last transformation, and I held myself steady in the face of the tests he threw my way.

Then he made his move, darting straight towards me. It was a move without guile, relying fully on speed, and it wasn't hard to duck behind a tree, letting his claw sink into the bark as I put the barrier between us.

He recoiled from the impact, and then it was my turn.

We rolled as I landed on top of him, but I kept the upper paw comfortably, using what weight I had to subdue him while my claws and teeth went to work on his sides, coming away bloody as I sank my weapons into his fur and then the flesh beneath it.

He squealed in pain, and threw me off. His teeth were bared, and there was a growling sound coming from within them, but his eyes were nervous, and he was giving off the stench of fear.

I snarled at him and charged, making myself as huge and terrifying as I could. He turned, and fled, disappearing head-first into the darkness of the surrounding forest, and I was once again left alone.

The small part of my mind that was Percy Jackson, that had stayed more or less in control for the duration of the fight, faded suddenly, as if realising that it was finally safe to rest, and my body remembered who it was supposed to be.

I was a wolf – and I was hungry again.

* * *

mcoombes: Wow that's so sad... but amazing writing. I like the "disjointed thoughts" writing you did for the wolf point of view, I've never seen that before. I can't wait for more

 **Thank you, I'm glad you think it worked!** **As you can (hopefully) see here it's beginning to calm down a bit already as Percy gets used to being a wolf, but it's good to know I managed to convey the weirdness of being forced into a new body reasonably well. Anyway,** **Sorry about the wait for this chapter, hopefully it's worth it.**

ShadowsClaw: Percy! You can't... You can't do that to her! XD That poor thing: life's not fair to this guy. I'm sorry after that nice note you wrote I'm only able to give you this short little thing - basically, I'm too eager waiting for the next chapter to think of something clever to say. XP I just love the way you write. As always, well done and I'm looking forward to the next. :)

 **Oh no, another person who said they were waiting eagerly for this chapter? Well, at least I know you're reading _Prized Possession_ too, so you must be used to it by now XD. The 'Percy-up-and-leaving-because-sad' thing is something that often strikes me as lazy writing when I see it in other fics, so I feel kinda bad about doing it here, but I had to get him out of camp somehow – and besides, now he has an extra thing to feel bad about all the time!**

 **I'll try to update again soon, but I should tell you all that the next few months are kinda crammed for me, so please don't be too disappointed/angry/relieved if the next chapter doesn't turn up for a while!**


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